Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Sri Lanka's failing 'war on terror'

On the phone yesterday to a Sri Lankan friend who was very upset with Britain's decision to stop a symbolic amount of tsunami aid to his country because of mounting concerns over Sri Lanka's human rights record.

The conflict has cost more than 65,000 lives

He felt that many of the British MPs speaking in a Parliamentary debate to discuss the decision sounded dangerously close to sympathizing with the Tamil Tiger rebels whose 25-year campaign for an independent Tamil homeland has already cost in excess of 65,000 lives.

The reality on the ground – wherever you chose to apportion blame for the current conflict – is that Sri Lanka is going from bad to worse on a daily basis.

Human Rights groups estimate that 700 people have 'disappeared' in the last year as the fight between the government and the rebels gets increasingly intense and nasty.

Local observers describe a "climate of fear" gripping the country and a growing impression that the state is starting to lose control as rival groups – the LTTE rebels, the Sri Lankan army and security services, Colonel Karuna's breakaway rebel faction and a Muslim minority group – all embark on a wave of tit-for-tat abductions and killings.

Britain's decision to with-hold the aid – a piffling but symbolic sum of Â£3m – was a diplomatic slap on the wrist. A public expression of displeasure at the refusal of the government of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse to listen to international counsel and seek a negotiated settlement with the rebels.

Rajapakse was elected two years ago on a 'war ticket' and has fulfilled his election pledge to the letter by openly seeking a 'military solution' to the conflict, 'clearing' the eastern areas of Sri Lanka of rebels and now doing daily battle in the LTTE's northern heartlands.

Britain is not alone in showing its frustrations with the Sri Lankan government. Japan, one of Sri Lanka's biggest donors is now 'reviewing' its position vis-Ã -vis Sri Lanka and Germany stopped its aid last December.

And America, supportive until recently, is also rapidly losing patience. A visit by assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher earlier this month led to the first public criticisms of Sri Lanka's human rights record.

However Rajapakse remains resolute, even to the point of 'going it alone', if necessary, as he told Sri Lankan newspaper editors recently.

This is bad news. I have some – very limited – sympathy with the Sri Lankan government who feel genuinely aggrieved at what they see as the world's blatant double standards on the terror issue.

Britain and America continue to commit flagrant 'human rights violations' and inflict multiple civilian casualties in their on-going war with Islamist terrorism, so why, the Sri Lankan government would argue, should Sri Lanka be treated differently as it tries to engage 'Tamil' terrorism?

Of course, as regular readers of this blog would know, I'd say both are wrong and moral hypocrisy on the part of the West is hardly a new phenomenon or an excuse for waging war in the manner the Sri Lankans are at the moment.

The truth is that Sri Lanka's government is now committed to spilling blood. Their airport only opens in daylight hours, inflation is raging and, as my friend on the phone reports to me, the business climate is 'disastrous' but they will not be deterred from what they see as a righteous cause.

For now, Rajapakse seems to be retaining political support among his key southern constituency. However as the war drags on, as it surely must, and the body bags pile up and the economic chill starts to bite, it remains to be seen how long that support will hold.

It may take a couple of years for the madness of the 'war strategy' to become clear – as it did in Ira – during which time many more thousands of people, many of them innocent women and children, will die.

But like all military campaigners, Rajapakse and his generals remain convinced of victory. They're deluded, of course, and as a British diplomat observed to me the other day, "Even if Rajapakse does win the war, what does he expect to 'win'?"